The Environment
Climate & Climate Politics
Politics — Newt Gingrich
Politics — Ron Paul
- Colin Delany: Ron Paul: Live by the Internet, Die by the Internet
So Ron Paul made the bigtime today: a feature in the New York Times. What about? Those little newsletters that came out in his name a couple of decades back. You know, the ones that (among other things) predicted an upcoming race war and “contain[ed] bigotry against black, Jews, and gays and an obsession with conspiracies.”
Perhaps the only surprise is that it took this long for the big guys to notice: plenty of people have known about the more controversial parts of the Paul oeuvre forever (Dave Weigel notes that he wrote about the newsletters four years ago). But the interesting part from an online politics point of view is that this is a classic example of the Internet’s double-edged nature.
- Paul builds campaign on doomsday scenarios | Reuters
The man who might win the Republican Party’s first presidential nominating contest fears that the United Nations may take control of the U.S. money supply.
Campaigning for the January 3 Iowa caucuses, Ron Paul warns of eroding civil liberties, a Soviet Union-style economic collapse and violence in the streets.
The Texas congressman, author of “End the Fed,” also wants to eliminate the central banking system that underpins the world’s largest economy…
But Paul’s dark-horse presidential bid ultimately could founder, analysts and others say, because of increasing questions about how his unorthodox vision of government would work in the real world.
- Ron Paul: Codger, crank or more? – CNN.com
Ron Paul is something more (or less) than a racist crank. As aptly observed in the Atlantic last week:
“As crazy as it sounds, Ron Paul’s newsletter writers may not have been sincerely racist at all. They actually thought appearing to be racist was a good political strategy in the 1990s. After that strategy yielded almost nothing — it was abandoned by Paul’s admirers…”
Don’t get the idea, however, that racism-as-strategy was some brief, futile dead-end for Paul. Paul exploited bigotry throughout his career, before as well as after the newsletter years. As Dave Weigel and Julian Sanchez reported in the libertarian magazine Reason, “Cato Institute President Ed Crane told Reason he recalls a conversation from some time in the late 1980s in which Paul claimed that his best source of congressional campaign donations was the mailing list for The Spotlight, the conspiracy-mongering, anti-Semitic tabloid run by the Holocaust denier Willis Carto until it folded in 2001.”
Crane is the president of the premier institution in the libertarian world. If his recollection is correct, Paul was appealing to consumers of Holocaust denial for political purposes half a decade before the newsletters commenced.
Nor is it wholly accurate to describe Paul’s strategy of appealing to the extremes as “abandoned.”
Politics
- 2011: The Right-Wing Media Witch Hunt Against Obama Administration Officials Continues | Media Matters for America — A great look at (a good list of) all the obstructionism from the right…
Since President Obama took office, the right-wing media have engaged in a smear campaign against Obama administration officials as well as people Obama has nominated for spots in the judiciary. This witch hunt has continued unabated in 2011.
- Newt Gingrich vs. Mitt Romney: Former House Speaker Praised Massachusetts Health Care Law
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich praised the health care law that his rival for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, signed in 2006 as governor of Massachusetts, according to a newsletter unearthed by the Wall Street Journal.
“The most exciting development of the past few weeks is what has been happening up in Massachusetts. The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health system,” reads “Newt Notes” from Gingrich’s former consulting company, the Center For Health Transformation. “We agree entirely with Governor Romney and Massachusetts legislators that our goal should be 100% insurance coverage for all Americans.” Gingrich’s spokesman responded that the newsletter was not written by the former House speaker and it should it be read as an endorsement of the plan.
- Debunking Responses to the Right Wing Attacks on the Chevy Volt
Society and Culture
Social Sciences
Economics & The Economy
- Amazon Says Long Term And Means It | The Passive Voice
- Brad DeLong: Why Reality-Based Economists Focus on Core Inflation
- The Core, Not Rotten – NYTimes.com
There have been many news reports the past few days about declining inflation — very different from this time last year, when warnings of higher inflation (and higher interest rates) abounded. As I’ve written many times, events amount to another win for the IS-LM model and the concept of a liquidity trap.
- The Core, Not Rotten – NYTimes.com
- Brad DeLong: Interest Rates: The U.S. Is Not Just the “Tallest Midget”, But One of a Number of “Safety” Countries
- Robert Samuelson Again Forgets What He Said About the Budget Deficit | Beat the Press
- The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive
- Politifact and the Echo Chamber Nation | Beat the Press
Science
- Sagittarius A* Dust Cloud: Planets May Be Devoured By Milky Way Black Hole In 2013
- Newfound Gas Cloud Points to Possible Planets Near the Milky Way’s Black Hole | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network
- Everyman’s Physics » American Scientist (via 3quarksdaily: Physics on the Fringe)
- How Climate Change Has Driven Species Evolution—and Could Drive Extinction | Ecocentric | TIME.com
Atheism (& Religion)
- Rationally Speaking: The goals of atheist activism
- Rogue Catholic Group Vandalizes Anglican Church Billboard | Friendly Atheist
Skepticism
- The $37.6 Million Dollar Fine HE Doesn’t Want You To Know About | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine
- Meet the Infomercial Scam King The Feds Just Nailed For $38 Million
- Infomercial pitchman Trudeau fined $37.6M – UPI.com
- Infomercial King Kevin Trudeau Fined $38 Million – ABC News
- Appeals Court Upholds &37.6 Million Fine Against Trudeau | The Moral Liberal